Voter turnout numbers in Escambia and Santa Rosa County were unusually high for midterm elections, mirroring high voter turnout numbers in the rest of the state. Experts say divisive party politics and high media attention on the presidency were partial reasons for the high turnout rates.(Photo: Gregg Pachkowski/gregg@pnj.com)

Voter turnout soared Tuesday both locally and across the state, marking the end of a particularly contentious midterm election cycle and potentially foreshadowing similarly high turnout numbers for the 2020 general election.

Escambia County saw 130,249 ballots cast between early voters and Election Day voters, bringing the turnout rate to 61.15 percent of the county's total registered voters. That's a sharp increase from midterms dating back to 2006 and possibly earlier, said David Stafford, the county's supervisor of elections.

"We like high voter turnout, obviously," Stafford said Wednesday morning. "We're running about 10 percentage points ahead of where we were in the last couple of midterm elections. We saw that with early in-person voting and vote-by-mail numbers, but you never really know until Election Day how much more the election turnout is going to be."

"But it was healthy yesterday," he added. "You always want turnout to be as high as possible, but a full 11 percentage points ahead of where we were in 2014, I think is a good sign."

Santa Rosa County saw 76,103 ballots cast, or almost 58 percent of registered voters. Normal turnout for midterm elections in the county is between 40 and 45 percent.

And across the state, Florida saw its highest voter turnout rate since 1994, according to the Florida Division of Elections. Unofficial voting numbers show the state had a 62 percent turnout rate, compared to a 51 percent turnout rate in 2014 and 49 percent in 2010.

The state's record midterm turnout rate of 66 percent in 1994 still stands.

Michelle Salzman, and Josh Gilmore work to drum up support for the appointed superintendent referendum, on this year election ballot talks, while campaigning the at the Pensacola Interstate Fairground polling site on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018. Tony Giberson/tgiberson@pnj.com

David Hawkins, owner of the Joe Morris Funeral Home, drives Mike Moreno home after voting at the Mayfair Community Center on Election Day in Pensacola on Tuesday, November 6, 2018. Hawkins is using his company's four limousines to provide free rides for people need transportation to go vote. Gregg Pachkowski/gregg@pnj.com

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Adam Cayton, a professor of American politics at the University of West Florida's Reubin O'D. Askew Department of Government, said that typically, midterm voter turnout is low because voters view local candidates as just that — local candidates. There's not as much excitement as there normally is during a presidential election.

But lately, Cayton said he's observed a trend of people being more excited by local elections due, in part, to candidates aligning themselves more with higher offices, namely, the presidency.

"I think there's a larger trend toward nationalization in politics ... where voters view congressional elections as an extension of their presidential vote and as an extension of their partisanship," Cayton said. "As that becomes the case, people's partisanship causes them to participate, because they're expected to participate."

Cayton said the unprecedented amount of attention Trump has gotten throughout his presidency, both from the public and the media, could also have boosted voter turnouts in this election. And while Republicans were motivated to vote to appease Trump, Democrats were motivated for opposite reasons.

"It's normal for the party that doesn't control the White House to be intensely motivated to vote during a midterm, just because they don't like what the new president is doing," Cayton said. "We saw that in 2010 with high voter turnout among Republicans, and in 1994 with Republicans voting against Bill Clinton ... . This is a pretty normal pattern, so the less popular a sitting president is with the other party, the higher turnout you're going to see from the party's supporters."